Technology

Advantages to Centralized Data Management

Data transformation

With centralized data management, data can be easily transposed, transformed and managed by experienced programming and statistical staff to suit various analysis needs of a specific study or related ancillary study.

Data security

Data is stored securely with documentation and administration of access authorization such that it cannot be accessed unless someone is given direct privileges through a tightly controlled process. A secure central data repository also negates the need to store study-related data on multiple platforms and mediums which might be lost either during or following completion of a study.

Data sharing

COMPASS data repositories and experienced programming staff facilitate creation and export of data into different formats. Upon request, data dumps can be created in requested formats for sharing with other informatics systems. In addition, data stored in a single location is accessible by multiple sites with tightly managed viewing privileges.

Disaster recovery

COMPASS data repositories are backed up on a regular basis and can be restored in case of server failure or occurrence of natural disasters. Hardware redundancy is also maintained at both the server and the infrastructure levels. This, along with professional server management, ensures that a greater than 99% system uptime is maintained.

Importance of Common Data Elements (CDEs)

The biomedical community continually experiences data management issues due to a single concept being described in many different ways with lack of appropriate data descriptors (metadata). CDEs (common data elements) help provide consistency in the way data is collected, formatted and described. Each CDE contains information (metadata) about the actual piece of data collected (such as a question on a clinical form, lab result or information about a specimen). The metadata describes the collected data in such a way that it can be compared to similar data collected at a different institution or from a different study, possibly resulting in data harmonization and analysis of a single uniform data set. Each set of agreed upon CDEs produces a data dictionary (derived from the metadata) that can facilitate the discussion, harmonization, and analysis of data. We encourage use of CDEs not only to assist with a single study and its associated data capture, analysis and presentation but to also enhance and assure potential for future data sharing; a current focus of many funding sources.

COMPASS has developed systems for managing CDEs, building forms based upon collections of CDEs and providing data dictionaries for forms or selected CDEs from our COMPASS repository. In addition, CDEs and accompanying metadata describing the CDE, can be exported for incorporation into other, external CDE repositories.

COMPASS staff includes a CDE specialist in residence who uses the CDE and Forms management tools to curate CDEs, create forms for use on studies and harmonize data from multiple sources.